Warren Smith -- "Goodbye Mr. Love"
Of all the rockabillies out there, Warren Smith might be my favorite.
The reason to listen to rockabilly isn't to get at the origins of rock and roll, though that is one thing you'll get out of it. The reason to listen to rockabilly is that it's some of the best country music ever recorded. Rockabilly was, at the time, the latest in a series of cultural fusions between white and black music that have happened throughout the history of recorded music, but in a way it wasn't as much a fusion as it was an infusion: rockabilly is blues-infused country music, and despite all our talk about rock coming from the blues, it has just as much or even more country in it. Warren Smith isn't the only evidence of this, though he had one of the most successful formulas for producing this kind of thing: you can hear some great drumming on his tracks as well as the upright bass, along with some crude but impassioned (and kind of dirty-sounding) electric guitar played by Al Hopkins.
The problem with rockabilly, of course, especially in its archival form, is that it allows for only a limited range of song rhythms and lyrical topics. Smith was good at including the range of possibilities in his recording. "Goodbye Mr. Love" highlights Smith's skills as a vocalist (and his occasional imperfections, as well) and tends more toward the ballad side of things, but there's still a little rock in it. Here's one of his best tracks.
No comments:
Post a Comment